The Doha trade round

Just do it

It is make-or-break time this spring for global trade talks

TO TRADE wonks versed in psychoanalysis, President George Bush's embarrassing slip of the tongue last month was revealing as well as amusing. The Doha round of global trade talks, which he referred to as the “Darfur round”, is, like the bloodied province of Sudan, an intractable problem that has consumed vast diplomatic efforts to little effect.

Last July Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), put the talks into hibernation to protect them from the cruel American election season. To revive the round, he said, would require hard numbers: tighter dollar limits on farm subsidies; bigger percentage cuts on tariffs; and fewer loopholes and exceptions. So far he has had to settle for soothing noises. This week, for example, the mood music was provided by Peter Mandelson, the European Union's trade commissioner, who had lunch in Washington, DC, with his American counterpart, Susan Schwab; her boss, Mr Bush; and the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso.

Ms Schwab likened the negotiations to “three-dimensional chess”. Mr Mandelson talks more positively about the “end-game”. Afterwards he said: “We came to Washington today looking for new impetus for the Doha negotiations and I believe we found it.” According to the Financial Times, Mr Mandelson believes he has a unique personal relationship with America's president. Perhaps, like Tony Blair, he uses the same brand of toothpaste.

Some of this cast will meet again with their counterparts from India and Brazil at the end of the month for the World Economic Forum in Davos, although that event is better known for hobnobbing than for hard bargaining. Just before that, Mr Bush will make his state-of-the-union speech, which may reveal the strength of his desire to renew his fast-track “trade-promotion authority”, which allows him to sign trade deals without Congress unpicking them. It expires on June 30th and without it no one will negotiate with him.

Unfortunately, Mr Bush is so unpopular that, the more he wants something, the less eager the Democrats who now control Congress may be to give it to him. They might attach strings to a fast-track deal that Mr Bush will find difficult to accept, such as generous compensation for workers displaced by foreign competition, or the enforcement of labour standards in America's bilateral agreements. Free-traders hope they will not demand too much, for fear of killing the Doha round and attracting the blame. But you cannot be arraigned for murdering a corpse. And so by the spring, the talks must show enough of a pulse to convince Congress that there is a deal worth sparing.

For that to happen, the Americans will first have to agree to screw down the limit on their trade-distorting farm subsidies, from about $22 billion to something like $15 billion-17 billion. Mike Johanns, the agriculture secretary, has been touring farm states, reminiscing about his childhood on an Iowa dairy farm and preaching the need for reform. Thanks to a boom in biofuels, America's farmers are enjoying high prices, but their cotton and rice handouts face stiff legal threats at the WTO and their corn subsidies this week came under attack from Canada. Mr Johanns will soon unveil his proposals for replacing today's farm programmes, which expire this year, with better ways to nurture cultivators.

If the Americans agree to pluck more of the feathers from their farmers' beds, the next move will fall to the Europeans. They seem ready to cut their agricultural tariffs by about half on average, but still want to spare too many “sensitive” products, such as beef and poultry, from the full force of the chop. If a compromise is reached, the third dimension of the chessboard includes Brazil, which is nervous about dropping industrial tariffs, and India, which has deep trepidation about opening its farm sector.

According to one of Mr Bush's lunch partners this week, his parting words to the two trade negotiators were: “Go to it, Susan. Go to it, Mandelson. Just get it done.” No slips of the tongue there.